My Journey
Dear Reader,
Throughout half of my senior year I participated in a class
called College Composition. I had chosen this class because I had thought it
would be rigorous and would set my mind to what college would be like for a
freshman and how I could overcome obstacles as a writer to pursue that college
mind. I was surprised though, the class had not only changed my thinking level
from adolescent to mature, but had changed my passion and love for writing. I
have always been a music fanatic; I would just sit for hours and produce two or
three songs for the guitar and to sing. Even though I could write music,
writing a piece of literature had not come so easily to me. Taking this class
showed me to think deeper and anyone who can put their mind to a piece of
writing can produce a masterpiece. As Jim Rohn said, "Never begin the day
until it is finished on paper".
When starting this class I thought I had the knowledge of a
writer having taken English class throughout middle and high school, but I was
astonished as to what else there was to learn. Writing comes in mainly four
types of modes, narration, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. Each mode
proves different when you are writing a paper and when given an assignment you
want to choose carefully as to which mode will best fit. Narration is when you
are telling a story to the reader and help by using characters, a plot,
setting, a climax, and a resolution. Descriptive writing is when you elaborate
on details and especially use your five senses of touch, taste, smell, sight,
and hearing. Expository writing is when you are trying to explain something to
the reader and will produce a "how-to" paper with step-by-step
instructions or an explanation on why something was done, such as the building
of the Erie Canal. Persuasive writing is when you are trying to persuade
someone to do something, or let you do something. With each paper you want to
use a different language and to provide that language you want to lead your
reader in with an avid and interesting introduction so that they have your
attention.
There are many different ways in which you can grab a
reader’s attention, you may ask a question, start with a fact, or even speak
directly to the reader. When asking a question you want to ask one that is
open-ended so that the reader is thinking about it, not one that is a quick yes
or no question. A good fact is something that is striking to the reader such
as, Mark Twain was born weeks after the Halley's Comet was seen and died the
same day as Halley's Comet was next seen. When you speak directly to the reader
you want to address their concerns by identifying that concern and by leading
them toward considering a new idea or viewpoint. By producing an efficient
introduction you are proving to your reader your paper is worth reading.
One last thing I learned in college comp. which proved very
helpful to me was that you want to show your reader by using descriptive words
and examples, not just tell them. Taking College Composition as one of my
senior electives for English was one of the best choices I have made and have
grown as a writer and as a person from that class.
As a writer I am very self-conscious, I don't want the world
to read my papers or even give thoughts to them because I don't want to
disappoint them. This was my weakness and you can see it in my early papers
because they were bland, didn't provide any detail just a paper with words. But
as I overcame this obstacle and learned more about myself as a person and a
writer I began to produce actual papers that I could let someone read and say,
"Yes, I wrote that." It's not easy writing, and I have made many
mistakes, most being grammar and spelling issues, but there are many strengths
I have shown also. Strengths that I have when writing are that I give passion
behind words; I don't want to produce a meaningless paper so I provide a paper
that is full of detail and explanation so that the reader is not full of
boredom. I grew so much as a writer that writing means a lot to me now and even
though I had weaknesses, and still do I am growing stronger each and every day
by writing from the heart.
There are many pieces that I have written in this class,
"The Breaking Down of Chocolate Chip Cookies", "Florida's Rising
Sun", "Nightingale", and "How to enjoy a Road trip".
One of the pieces that I wrote that had shown great weaknesses was, "The
Breaking Down of Chocolate Chip Cookies" because it was bland. When
writing this piece I was not a happy camper, I didn't like chocolate chip
cookies as much as the average American does, and I did not feel it was really
necessary to write. So with this pessimistic attitude I produced a paper that
had an iffy introduction, and a list of brands labeled best to worst in
different categories. You can tell in my introduction it was a little weird
because I used sentences such as, "The consuming of the chocolate chip
cookie, with the warm softness brushing your face, sinking into the taste buds
of your tongue, sending an intense rush of food pleasure throughout your
body." No I don't get orgasms when I eat chocolate chip cookies, so I knew
that this introduction needed revision so when writing a blog of three
different introductions for our food paper it proved worthy because know I have
enough thought as to what introduction is best for this paper. I realized after
coming back to the paper, it wasn't half-bad I just needed to tune it up a bit.
With the new introduction it was a first step, but then I had to go through the
whole paper and re-word some phrases such as expanding on descriptions that
gave sight as to what category the chocolate chip cookie brands were being
graded on. When describing the cookie as a whole my presentation was short,
"The cookie as a whole is also very necessary, the quantity of chocolate
chips, the color of the cookie, and the size all matter. When comparing the
looks of the cookies I came up with this list from best to worst..." Blah,
blah, blah, right? This was the last piece I was going to let bring me down
though and when producing the other three pieces they had all shown a different
strengths in my writing.
When writing how to enjoy a road trip, me and my partner
Cassie had decided to split the paper into two parts, Cassie would write the
pre-road trip packing and I would write the how to enjoy the actual road trip.
When comparing parts you could tell that it was split up between the two of us
because mine was more elaborate and showed details when explaining the road
trip and her examples were bland. When she was writing the pack necessities
part it was "Pack necessities a) clothes b) toiletries c) snacks d)
books" comparing hers to mine, my part was "1) Breathe- With this,
you have to learn to pace yourself with the breaths that you are to be taking.
If you see someone wearing tight pants with no spandex and their skin being
sucked in, breathe for them. If you are doing “who can hold their breath the
longest” contest, make sure at all times the driver is breathing, we do not
want a car accident. If you see someone who may have a gun, just breathe, if
you don’t hurt them they won’t hurt you." So when comparing parts of the
paper you can see that it was a weakness that we had not worked together and
the paper as a whole was a little sloppy. On my part though I thought it was a
good paper because I was very sarcastic as you can see during the breathe
examples I stated that, "If you see someone wearing tight pants with no
spandex and their skin is being sucked in, breathe for them." One of the
other papers which I thought had shown much strength of mine was the Seven Deadly
Sins paper. When writing this paper we had to base our topic on an idea where
the seven deadly sins could potentially take place. My characters setting took
place on vacation to Florida. When arriving to Florida she comes across
different characters such as Beatrice Portly, Delia Manate, and Scarlet. I
thought this paper had shown strength because characters names could be
associated with which sin they were to partake in, Beatrice Portly would commit
a sin of gluttony, while Scarlet would commit the sin of sloth. I was able to
produce a climax, Delia was caught kissing a boy whom which her father was not
very happy about (no it is not a Romeo and Juliet story), and a resolution
which provided the main character a time of peace when she would go to bed
after a long day. The piece was narration, one of the four modes of writing,
and was one of the better papers in which I had written over the course of this
class because I could provide good details and a good set plot. Nightingale was
the best out of my papers because I was very passionate about writing this.
Nightingale was based off of my mother who had provided to be a great mentor in
my lifetime. Nightingale had provided insight to my mother’s life and her care
for everyone around her and showed this with examples of helping a young woman
walking home in the pouring rain with her baby by driving her home, and helping
an old woman on the streets being weighed down by tons of groceries by offering
her a lift to the bus station. Examples weren't the forte of the paper though;
it was the metaphors and similes that made the paper. "He opened up to
her, poured his problems to her, like pouring rain, each beat of his life hit a
string in her heart", that was one of the similes that I thought put the
right setting as to how one of my mother’s students had been touched by my
mother’s light. Nightingale was the best paper I have written all year.
When writing each paper and then looking back over them, we
had to provide insights as to what was our thought-process to complete each
paper, what do we need to change and how can we change it? So when making a
blog based on a paper that was written I would help provide an insight to the
reader. With the paper on chocolate chip cookies, I provided three different introductions
where the reader could look over each and help me choose which one they thought
had more detail and more significance over the other two and really helped me
change my paper around just with that thought. This blog was titled, the
beginning of an end, which I named because the introductions were to help end
my dilemma as to where the paper was going to go. The "Chocolate Chocolate
Chocolate Evaluation" was one of the blogs in which I provided my thought
process to the reader as to why and how I wrote this paper. This included the
research I performed, evaluating the cookie itself then going further by
looking at their website layout and viewing their activities they had with the
layout they provided. Also I showed the reader why I had the introduction based
on my mother’s kitchen; because it is an American household scent and is
commonly and widely known as one of the greatest scents known to mankind. With
the "Gimme Gimme More of the Chocolate Chip Cookie" second draft I
had changed my original draft around and made grammatical changes and fixed
spelling errors, as well as put in a different introduction than the first time
round. Moving on to the seven deadly sins blog entries, I wrote the blog how my
eyes viewed the original seven deadly sins because I was going back to the day
when I first got the assignment on what we were writing and how I wondered
where I was going to go with this paper because it wasn't a ordinary run of the
mill paper. With this paper I really had to think of a good place in which
seven deadly sins could be committed and after thinking of a good place had to
come up with scenarios which could fit in with the setting and characters that
would fit in with the scenarios. With this blog it provided detail as to why I
chose Florida as the destination where seven deadly sins would take place and
why I chose characters such as Lane Lively, and Beatrice Portly. The will you
evaluate the fun you have on a road trip blog was a blog written to look back
on the how to enjoy a road trip paper. This paper was supposed to be
informational to the reader and provide good details as to how the reader could
do little things to get ready and enjoy the road trip of their life. And lastly
I wrote a couple blogs based on my paper Nightingale which was based on my
mother. As I grow up my mother will always be the Nightingale to sing me a song
was asking the reader to help me with the revision of the paper and asking
questions like if the paper was too lengthy to get an idea as to what needed to
be changed and how to change it. These blogs took time and effort, and with
each and every one I put that time and effort in. I wanted each blog to be
detailed and full of examples so that the reader could grasp what I was saying
and could have examples to see where I was coming from. As a writer, writing
these blogs was a good way to get ideas out there and have input come back.
As a writer when writing these papers and writing the blog
entries to go along with each different paper, I gave it my all. Sometimes I
landed on my face with a paper but I was always given good input so I could get
back on my feet with each one. I hope you enjoy reading through my blog, and
ask questions or even give input. My papers give insight to my life as a
writer, and my thoughts. Writing is passion.
Your friend,
Clara B.
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